


Saudade

by Sheepie



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alzheimer's Disease, Angst and Feels, Eggsy is an old man, Existential Angst, Harry Hart is Dead, Heavy Angst, M/M, Memory Loss, This is pure angst, like I'm not kidding, this was just an excuse for me to write something really sad, you'll need tissues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 09:26:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4661433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheepie/pseuds/Sheepie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>sau·da·de</b><br/>souˈdädə/<br/><i>noun</i><br/>a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament.</p>
<p>
  <i>Even as Eggsy's memory slips, he can still remember the shape of Harry's smile.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saudade

**Author's Note:**

> Lightly edited. I regret nothing.

Saudade

            Eggsy woke on a Tuesday morning to a sun beam cutting across his bed and warming his cheek. He raised his hand to block out the light, but the rays merely slipped through the cracks in his fingers. There was something in the first slants of light, in the way the dust floated in the shafts—it was the familiarity of a lover’s touch, the gentle heat against flesh, the reminder of a life lived, even when others’ have ended. Wrinkles and age spots covered his hand, which shook from the effort to hold it up. Eggsy dropped his hand and rolled over onto his side, turning to face the empty spot on the left side of the bed.

            Some mornings, when sleep held on for a little longer, when his mind floated in a state of gray, Eggsy swore he felt the weight of a body next to his own—it was the slight pressure against his back, the faded warmth of someone that had once been there, but had gotten up, leaving behind only impressions and memories in the sheets.

            He slipped his hand up the quilted comforter, settling his gnarled fingers—swollen and arthritic—against the cold pillow next to his own. Eggsy drew in a deep breath, still only half-awake, able to recede back into dreams, to give face and shape to ghosts that had been quiet for decades.

            Eggsy remained there, caged by the sun that filtered through the slats in the blinds, and tried to remember the shade of brown Harry’s eyes were. At one time he had been able to wax poetically about their hue, but now, in the brightening morning, he couldn’t seem to recall whether they were the color of perfectly steeped tea or the polished leather of a good pair of Oxfords. All he remembered was that when he looked into them, he felt infinite.

            The alarm clock alerted Eggsy when it was time to get up. He leaned over the left side of the bed, the mirage dissolving into dust and sunlight, and turned off the alarm clock. Eggsy slipped on a pair of glasses—real glasses, not Kingsman-issued—and climbed out of bed with a groan, various parts of his body cracking and creaking in protest. He found his red robe, which hung from his bony limbs like a blanket, and secured the sash tightly around his waist.

            It never went unnoticed how quiet the house was in the mornings. Now that J.B. was gone there wasn’t the scratch of nails against the hardwood or the tinkling of his collar to alert Eggsy of his arrival.

The strange thing about silence was that it was never truly _silent_. When there were no longer voices to be heard, when the absence of sound filled a room, Eggsy became aware of the ringing between his ears, the shallow beating of his heart, and the way the pipes in the walls groaned. In the quiet, Eggsy heard everything, and he became vastly aware of the emptiness that accompanied the hush.

            He walked out of the bedroom, deviating from his normal route towards the stairs, and entered the office down the hall. Over the years the office had changed, going through several coats of paints, new furniture, and even more computers. Eggsy no longer remembered all of the faces the room had tried on.

He never forgot, though, about the first time he entered the office. The memory had faded over the years, fuzzy around the edges, as if Eggsy were watching through a pair of glasses with the wrong prescription in them. But there Harry had sat, leaning back in his leather office chair, dressed in a bespoke suit that accentuated his narrow waist. He smiled at Eggsy, and Eggsy smiled back, wanting nothing more than to pluck the moon from the sky and present it to Harry.

            Eggsy trailed over to the blue walls—what color had they been when Harry lived here? A reddish color, like terracotta, or was it browner? Eggsy didn’t know—and flattened his palm against the surface. The newspaper clippings had been removed years ago, when Eggsy could no longer look at them, and were saved in scrap books and boxed up in the attic. He didn’t remember the headlines. But he remembered the way they made his heart constrict, remembered how even when Harry explained to him what they meant, a pang had broken Eggsy’s heart.

            Eggsy dropped his hand, shaking his head, and immediately left the office, shutting the door behind him. He headed down the stairs, having to hold onto the banister to keep from falling. His bones protested with each step, and Eggsy wondered if perhaps Daisy was right, maybe he should look into moving to a single story. But the idea of leaving this home— _Harry’s home_ —cut deep into Eggsy.

            No. He couldn’t leave. Not when there were still memories lingering in the shadows.

            This was where Harry had stood the day of the last test, dressed in an oatmeal cardigan, a tired and disappointed look on his face. Eggsy laid his hand over the spot where Harry’s had rested, and for a second he thought he could still feel the heat of Harry’s hand against the wood—but perhaps it was just because Eggsy was cold.

            Eggsy went into the kitchen and went about making his tea and breakfast—nothing more than toast and marmalade—and carried the plate into the dining room. He took the seat on the left, next to the head chair. The tray trembled in his hands as he set it down, tea sloshing over the side of the cup.

            What would Harry say to see Eggsy now? Slightly hunched and gray, dressed in thick robes and sweaters to keep his perpetually freezing bones warmed.

            He’d gently tease him and assure Eggsy that he was still his _darling boy_ , Eggsy liked to think.

            Eggsy eased himself into his seat and stared a moment at the empty chair beside his own. He raised his tea in salute, murmuring, “Good morning, Harry.”

            Eggsy took a sip of tea, sighing happily, and then went about spreading orange marmalade on his toast. Eggsy looked up, beaming at a Harry Hart, whose face was no longer clear, no longer bright and flawless; but Eggsy wouldn’t forget the shape of that smile, or the way the black striped apron, which should have looked ridiculous, had been so dashing on him, and how it had been in that moment that Eggsy thought, _yes, I love him._

They’d laughed, overwhelmed by the possibility of forever. They believed that today wouldn’t end, that tomorrow was nothing more than a distant idea, and that if they held on long enough, they could capture those fleeting seconds in a bottle. Eggsy had been so sure of his place in Kingsman, as sure as Harry had been.

How were they to know about Chester’s tricks? About Valentine’s plan? About Harry’s death?

            They were fools—lovely, glorious fools—and they believed in the now, in the boundlessness that was _them_.

            “You left far too early Harry,” Eggsy commented, his voice scratchy, different—it wasn’t the same voice he remembered from when he was twenty and still carried a Cockney accent. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to leave before the party is over? A gentleman only goes when his partner is ready.”

            Eggsy set his toast down and stared at his fingertips, which were coated in marmalade and crumbs. He swallowed thickly, throat convulsing around a lump of emotions that had been buoying in his esophagus for over fifty years.

            “And I wasn’t ready,” Eggsy whispered.

            He’d never been ready to say goodbye. He didn’t know if he ever would be. How can you be prepared to say goodbye to your heart?

You can’t be.

            Eggsy never said goodbye. Eggsy never mended what had been broken. Eggsy had been left, shattered and alone, surrounded by the memories of a man whose time had been too short.

            Eggsy looked at the head chair, picking up his toast and taking a bite. He smiled around his mouthful, watching Harry butter his toast and listening to him comment on how lovely today would be and that, yes, he was so very proud of Eggsy. He was grayer in places, but he was still Harry, still the man Eggsy loved.

            History would never remember the name Harry Hart.

            But Eggsy would.


End file.
